What we wear, what we watch, who we marry, how we vote, what we support, and just about every aspect of daily living is informed by—and in many ways governed by—our cultural subscription. – Marcus Collins
References to culture abound. We read about company culture, family culture and organizational culture. Peter Drucker has written that “culture eats strategy for breakfast” and others have expanded that by saying that culture eats everything. In his book, For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be, Marcus Collins taps into his experience creating some of the most powerful and captivating marketing campaigns with companies like Apple, Nike and the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets.
I think what makes this book so powerful and valuable is in its call to creating and adhering to authentic culture. In some cases, we create a company culture by identifying and adhering to the values that correspond to the type of organization we want to be. Other times, we successfully market and sell products to a community or organization because of shared values and the acknowledgement of a tribe or community. Collins provides a grounded approach to understanding how we can better understand culture, symbolism, and community membership – not just for sales and marketing but for real community.
There’s no force more influential than culture and that framework dictates almost all the decisions that we make, whether we’re conscious of them or not. And we as leaders, as marketers, as managers, activists, politicians, as clergy, even as parents, the more that we understand this, the more likely we are to harness its power to get people to adopt behavior. – Marcus Collins